


Old Nate

by Soquilii9



Category: Leverage
Genre: Gen, Old Nate Soliloquy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 08:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soquilii9/pseuds/Soquilii9
Summary: Ah, if a painting could talk...





	Old Nate

 

 

Excuse me while I clear my throat.  Now that I have my own audience, and am suddenly empowered with the ability to speak, I find myself quite unprepared.  Hanging beneath permanent illumination with minute particles of dust settling in ever-increasing increments (do they not own a _Swiffer™?!_ ) for several years now, I find my voice quite dry and brittle.

_Ahem._

Thank you for your patience.  If I sound a bit like John Houseman, it’s intentional.  I’m sure Alec Hardison was imagining Nate Ford’s authoritative but occasionally hoarse speech patterns when he painted me but I prefer the cultured tones of Houseman.  I think it suits my demeanor.

Where to begin.  What to say.  What _not_ to say!  Oh- _ho-ho-ho_ , what a tonnage _that_ consists of!  The things I’ve seen!  The very weight of it strains the wire that holds me to the wall.  To deprive you of all that would be sheer boredom.  As I glance around, I see no rules or regulations; no edicts minutely etched onto a plaque on the wall behind me, beside me, or anywhere else.

So - anything’s fair game, wouldn’t you say?  I do have the goods on these people.

You’ve no doubt read this far and find it amusing that I, a mere painting, can even speak?  Why, there are scores of examples of that very thing; _Yale University Press_ has such a tome about the _National Gallery_ in London; _The Guardian_ Art and Design Dept. has a verse touching on the subject; the _Wall Street Journal_ ran a rather interesting article and even a website such as _Tumblr_ wonders how art can talk and paintings can text; the latter being rather ridiculous, actually.  All this speculation about the possibilities!  So - here I am, chatting away.

Now, to reiterate where to begin, I will say I was – let’s say _created_ instead of _born_ \- roughly the second week of December, 2008 as an oil on canvas, under the very talented hands of someone I never would have credited with artistic skill.  The lad was a computer whiz; a genius; a quick-thinking twenty-two-year-old with a smart phone and a problem with authority.  He carried on quite a conversation with himself as he worked, which is how I learned what had transpired prior to my creation.  I won’t bore you with that; if you've watched _Leverage_ at all, you're aware of it.  If you haven’t, I highly recommend it. 

I will say that Mr. Ford provided the funds for the offices – let’s call it what it was, a _front_ \- for what I initially thought were illegal and salacious purposes.  Mr. Hardison had endowed the entry with nice carpet, tasteful furniture, signage and soft lighting.  Computer equipment was installed in offices for each of the five partners along with business cards and stationery.  He covered all contingencies; their identities, payroll taxes, corporate taxes, pension plans, employment records, case files and company newsletters.  Mr. Hardison's own masterpiece, as he called it, was the conference room with one full wall dedicated to television/computer screens; photo and video forensics programs, back doors into every electronic banking system in the world, running heuristic data crawls all over the news sites to find clients, facial recognition database tied into CIA, NSA and the FBI.  A sports package was included.

Mr. Hardison even endowed the company with a history; I emerged from beneath his paint brush to stand for the corporation's founder.  Mr. Hardison's quirky sense of humor, which later so endeared him to the shorter, hot-tempered fellow with the long hair, came into play after I - after the the _painting_ \- was complete.  That is, _all but the face_.  He saved that for last.  By this time he had been working for Mr. Ford for some weeks and no doubt had formed an opinion of the man; a not altogether positive one, I gather.  There on the canvas, against a dark background, emerged a middle-aged, nondescript man with a rather mid-19 th century, gray hairstyle, a high forehead and stern eyebrows that could have belonged to any number of men.  My head was tilted at a scholarly degree; my shirt, suit and tie were impeccable.  The hint of a handkerchief peeked out of my suit pocket.  My arms were folded in no-nonsense fashion.  The eyes were then sketched in.

Now that I could see a little, as Mr. Hardison looked directly at me, his features cracked open into a mischievous grin and his big eyes slit almost shut with glee.  He set about fine-tuning the brows, filling in the eyes, shadowing the nose and the bemused, slightly pursed mouth.  A few touches and tweaks later, Mr. Hardison stood back, looked me right in the eye and grinned with satisfaction.  Sadly, my gaze was set slightly left so I couldn’t match him stare for stare.  I wondered what he saw in me.  He snickered, then cleared his throat, becoming quite serious.

‘Ladies and Gentleman,’ he said to a non-existent audience, ‘I give you … Harlin Leverage, III.’  He had named me:  the founder of a base of operations dedicated to illegal practices.  What woes awaited me, I could only imagine.  If it had been possible, I would have hung my head in shame.

Still, after having seen Mr. Ford, I was grateful he didn’t name me after my doppelganger.  That man’s hair was a disheveled mess half the time and his suits hung askew, wrinkled and stained, reeking of whiskey.  I did want to rise above that, at least.

Miss Devereaux happened to see me hanging on the wall.  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Mr. Hardison, ‘Nate is going to kill you.’

Mr. Spencer called it weird.  Or called _me_ weird.  I'm not sure which.  He probably thought _Mr. Hardison_ was weird.  That was acceptable.

I never found out what Miss Parker thought of me.  As for Mr. Hardison, he had a rather high opinion of himself.  ‘I’m talented,’ he said. 

I still hadn't seen myself until one day when the light was right I saw a reflection in one of the large TV screens.  I was _not_ amused.  Leverage Consulting  & Associates, with me as founder and a history which began in 1913… wait, _seriously?_   Men didn’t wear their hair like this less than a century ago!  By the gods, I look like General Sam Houston.  Mark Twain.  Harry Henderson.  If you keep looking at me, you'll see that expression on my face is not necessarily dignified.  I’m pissed as hell at Mr. Hardison.  My hands are unfortunately folded in the sleeves of my jacket; I can’t even flip him off.

To his credit, however, Mr. Hardison frames me in a very elegant gold leaf antique that must have set him back a few hundred dollars at least, and hangs me under a soft light in a conspicuous place.  And there I hang.  And hang.  And hang.  In full sight of the workings of a gang of thieves, con artists and at least one murderer.  I’m modeled after the only honest man on the team with a permanent bad hair day, and speaking of hanging, look at who _he’s_ hanging around with!  They’re soiling him.  It's a reflection on me and I don't like it.

Time passed, however; years even, and I began to see they were using their devious and underhanded tactics … to actually _help_ people.  _Amazing_.  That Mr. Spencer with the attitude – the really bad attitude that I thought was beyond redemption, in fact – ceased his murderous activity.  Well, there was that _one_ time, but like my doppelganger, I tactfully refuse to acknowledge it.  Mr. Spencer's devotion to protecting the team from all harm is admirable, and it comes at a cost - always to him.  I misjudged him.  That little quirky pixie, Miss Parker, she’s my favorite.  She’s all thief, though, through and through; I can't see her ever truly reformed.  I’ve watched her lift a few dollars from her co-workers' wallets; break into their locked offices to either satisfy her curiosity or keep in practice and even lift stuff from her clients (she always puts it back).  Must give her a thrill.  How she can exist on a diet of cereal is beyond me.  She’ll have cereal for dinner and a piece of chocolate for dessert.

Although it took her a while, Miss Parker finally saw what I saw over time:  Mr. Hardison, for all his underhanded, shady ways, is a really decent man.  Under the glow of this lamp it’s hard to see sometimes, but I’ve watched the shadowplay in the next room; her small form is hard to miss; he’s the tall, lanky one.  They’ve had romantic, rainy day picnics.  Long talks.  They’ve watched movies together.  Often the light between the two profiles vanishes.  I wish I could look away and give them their privacy but a two-dimensional painting doesn’t have that luxury.

My doppelganger has always had a thing for that graceful, sophisticated brunette.  I knew that before he did, but for such a long time he was so in love with that accursed bottle.  I didn’t think he’d ever see what was right in front of him.  There were a few times when I thought she’d just give up on him.  She fled to Paris, stayed a year and finally came back.  After that, she never failed to reproach him – or royally chew him out - whenever she thought he needed it.  I think he came to depend on that.  I think she pulled him out of the sewer, truth be told.  No telling where he would have ended up but for her.  An honest but broken man, mired in grief and drowning in amber liquid.  Not a pretty sight.  How ironic that he ended up as much as thief as the rest of them but to quite a degree, a better man.  Healed.

Now should I go into what I’ve seen Mr. Spencer, the only fancy-free man on the team, do?  You might be surprised.  Aside from plopping himself down in front of every sports channel available on those multiple screens that frankly give me a migraine; a bottle plucked from a 6-pack in one hand and often an ice pack in the other, he has never done anything inappropriate in the conference room where I can see him.  I think he has a thing for privacy.  He’s had many a lady friend accompany him to his office down the hall, but past that door, it’s all speculation.  I bet you thought I was going to spill all kinds of juicy gossip, didn’t you?  Shame on you.

I am limited to what I can see and hear, you know.  I can only look in one direction - straight ahead, slightly left.  Keep that in mind.  Just because Mr. Hardison, talented as he may be, painted me doesn't allow me to read people's minds.  I can only relate that which I see and hear and feel.  Yes, _feel!_

Let me tell you what happened while we were still in Boston, before we moved to Portland.  Mr. Hardison had the bright idea of opening the protective paper on the back of my frame and stuffing who knows how many thousands of dollars behind me.  He kept one corner loose and kept stuffing and stuffing and stuffing until it actually started to stretch the canvas!  It was damned uncomfortable, let me tell you.  Hard corners of currency bundles digging into my back, behind my ear, nearly poking a hole through my necktie!  I hung that way for years, cursing the day I was painted.  One happy day, he came rushing in and all but tore the paper off my back; the money cascaded to the floor and the relief was instantaneous.  Miss Parker was in the kitchen dumping cereal boxes full of cash onto the counter and Mr. Spencer was ripping the seat out of a chair. More cash.  I didn’t know that much money existed.  I don’t know what purpose it all went to; it better have been a good one.  I wasn't designed to be a bank!  Thankfully, I was never again forced to conceal cash.  Mr. Hardison touched up the few places where the paint had flaked off and I felt better.

Then came the day I was taken off the wall and unceremoniously carted out, never to see those elegant offices again.  In fact, Mr. Hardison rigged explosive to blow them up!  I was grateful they thought to save me.  Or rather, Mr. Hardison did; Mr. Spencer was quite reluctant to help carry me out; understandable since he had broken ribs.  I was packed with care and flown to Portland where I was stored for a while.

Once everyone arrived in Portland I was brought out again and rehung in a climate where I not only had to deal with more dust but moisture.  Portland is very wet!  I’ve developed mold here and there, especially in the corners of my frame.  Can someone please inform Mr. Hardison?!  He must have a Twitter account.  Maybe he'll listen to you; he consistently ignores me.

Sadly, in fact, I’m rather superfluous now; the old _front_ of Leverage Consulting  & Associates is no longer used (although on rare occasions, the name still appears on checks the team issues to clients).  Pity.  Now it’s just an informal headquarters; offices in a building with a beer pub for a cover.  Effective; resourceful, but no elegance.  I miss that.  I once fit beautifully with the old decor.

I still grace a wall, just a reminder of the old days and simpler times, maybe the butt of a joke or two.  Now the team seems focused on more and more elaborate methods of exacting justice.  Picking up where the law leaves off. 

I’ve come to respect these five people and find myself staring proudly down at them.  I once felt ashamed to be among them; now, instead of being a representation of a dignified founder of a nonexistent corporation, I'm a symbol of righteousness, justice and fair play.  The end indeed certainly justifies the means in this case.

Of course you know by now that Mr. Ford never killed nor even threatened to kill Mr. Hardison because of my resemblance to him.  I think he rather takes it as a compliment.  I only wish Mr. Hardison would pay me the compliment of an occasional dusting!

 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> The San Lorenzo Job, 2010: Nathan Ford: 'You know what I have? I have twenty-four year old genius with a smart phone and a problem with authority.' Therefore since this is set in 2008, Hardison is twenty-two.


End file.
